


Bejeweled

by Laura Kaye (laurakaye)



Series: Laura's Home For Abandoned Stories [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Community: wip_amnesty, Edutainment, M/M, Video & Computer Games, the Ancients hate fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 09:58:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1814434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John didn't care how enlightened you supposedly were, a civilization that maintained full military and science staffs without accumulating several terabytes of one-handed entertainment was just creepy, somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bejeweled

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This story is an ABANDONED WIP. What you see here is all there is, and all there will ever be. However, it contains no cliffhangers.
> 
> Where I could, I have filled in notes for what would happen in between the completed scenes [in brackets like this.]

The thing that had always bothered John about the Ancients was that, aside from the inherent coolness of living in a _flying city_ where you could _turn things on with your brain_ , their lives seemed to be kind of - well, _boring_. It just didn't make sense- they'd found science stuff and military stuff and engineering stuff and oddball scary-ass stuff that was supposed to help you Ascend, but nothing that seemed designed for entertainment. No movies, no toys, no music, no videogames, no _porn_ \- and John didn't care how enlightened you supposedly were, a civilization that maintained full military and science staffs without accumulating several terabytes of one-handed entertainment was just creepy, somehow. The Atlantis intranet was a veritable hive of illicit content ranging from every possible kind of porn to the complete third season of _I Dream of Jeannie_. There were occasional rumblings from management about resource allocation, but they were always quickly squashed by John, who would make vague references to a couple of research papers about stress relief in hardship posts that Sumner had kept in his files, and Rodney, who would say, "think of your work with the science staff. Now, picture them crankier, more sexually frustrated, and with no way to find out what's happening on _Battlestar Galactica,_ " and opposition would generally melt away. So for one reason and another, John was oddly relieved when he discovered the games menu on the jumpers' onboard nav computer.

Flying a ship that magically showed you exactly what you wanted with a thought was cool, of course, but it did mean you never actually spent much time looking at menus. He'd been on a routine mission, hiding behind a moon while waiting for an orbital alignment to come around because the natives only entertained strangers when the auspices were right. The rest of the team was sleeping, John was maintaining orbit and keeping watch, and when he wished he had solitaire or something to keep him occupied, the jumper had hummed and unfolded a multi-tiered display.

As it turned out, the Ancients really had invented solitaire, only it involved complex Ascention metaphors and what appeared to be a double deck of cards with six suits, with the number system apparently in base eight.

There were puzzles, too, mostly math but with a sprinkling of symbolic logic games that resembled a sort of sprawling, multidimensional sudoku. There was a full-body combat sim that, if John's Ancient was correct, was actually called "Wraith Invaders". He chuckled at the irony, but it was a bit too realistic for his peace of mind, so he shut it down and started poking through the games menu again.

He'd thought it was pure entertainment at first, but after looking at everything he thought it was more likely to be meant for education - training for the pilots, encouragement for them to hone their reflexes and their brains on any downtime they might have on missions. Typical of the Ancients, really, and John felt a little disappointed, but he reminded himself that educational or not, the games were fun, and he still had two hours left before Teyla would relieve him.

The last game on the list had a long and untranslateable (for John, anyway) name, but 30 seconds in, John named it Ancient Bejeweled. It wasn't an exact analogue, of course, but "Be-Circuit-Crystaled" didn't have the same ring to it. It was much harder than Bejeweled, too; the crystals changed color when a certain type of current was sent through them, and the player could swap out crystals or change currents, but the currents were also fluid, changing in a pattern John was just on the edge of figuring out. Some of the crystals were coupled and had to be changed together, and others reset the whole matrix when they were altered. It was strangely fascinating. He barely noticed the time passing, so that he started a little when Teyla touched his shoulder, gently, ready to take her turn at the watch.

[the idea was that Ancient Bejeweled was actually a training program for circuit engineers and John is able to use his experiences to avert a crisis on Atlantis. He never told Rodney about the game because he wanted to get far enough ahead that Rodney would have trouble beating his high score. Rodney finds John's brain sexy. ]


End file.
